Big Content wants $13 million from Pirate Bay as trial starts

The trial of The Pirate Bay's backers kicked off Monday in Sweden as the …

The Pirate Bay's "spectrial" got underway in Sweden Monday morning as prosecutors laid out the charges. Appearing before a packed house of bloggers, press, and people dressed as pirates, prosecutor Hakan Roswall made his opening statement, charging The Pirate Bay with aiding in massive copyright infringement and profiting from its actions.

Three Pirate Bay defendants and Carl Lundstom, a Swedish businessman who used to run Rix Telecom and is accused of being a Pirate Bay investor, were in the dock listening. Roswall painted the group as businesspeople out to make serious money from their operations, and he detailed the site's genesis and growth since being launched back in 2004.

Those who understand what The Pirate Bay is and how BitTorrent works won't find much new or shocking in Roswall's summary of the case; the question is simply whether creating a search engine and tracker service that traffics mainly in copyrighted content is illegal in Sweden or not.

Content owners did provide a bit of new information, however—specifically, the amount of money that record labels and movie studios want from The Pirate Bay. It turns out to be over $13 million (117 million kronor).

For a trial taking place in Sweden and broadcast only in Swedish, one of the remarkable aspects of the "spectrial" is the interest and involvement of people from around the world. With Swedish media outlets making the audio stream of the trial available, bilingual webheads have been translating and summarizing the day's action on the Web and—in a remarkable show of commitment to the cause—though hundreds of tweets.

In addition, The Pirate Bay defendants are themselves blogging, tweeting, and holding press conferences (one was held on Sunday; Swedish TV4 was banned for past "bad behavior"). They are intent on seeing the trial as mere spectacle and sideshow, a last gasp of the absurd from some dying industries, and one that will be demolished by people power.

In an editorial released this weekend "via the internets," The Pirate Bay wrote that the way this trial differs "from most earlier trials is that everything in and surrounding it will whirl round and round in diverse channels of communication; to be discussed, reinterpreted, copied and criticized. Every crack in their appeal will be penetrated by the gaze of thousands upon thousands of eyes on the internets, in all the channels covering the trial. Old cliches from the antipiracy lobby wont stick. You won’t be able to say stuff like, 'you can’t compete with free' or 'filesharing is theft' without a thousand voices making fun of you."

Despite the glib tone and tough words, the defendants face up to two years in jail and potentially massive fines. They may consider the trial to be little more than spectacle, but if so, it's a spectacle with real consequences.

The defendants claim not to be worried. Tweeting from within the trial today, The Pirate Bay's programmer Peter Sunde wrote, "How the hell did they think this was going to be something else than EPIC FAIL for the prosecution? We're winning so hard."

Ludvig Werner, the boss of IFPI's local Swedish chapter, had a somewhat different perspective: The Pirate Bay is about keeping money out of creators' hands and putting it into Pirate Bay pockets. "Copyright exists to ensure that everyone in the creative world—from the artist to the record label, from the independent film producer to the TV programme maker—can choose how their creations are distributed and get fairly rewarded for their work," he said in a statement.

"The operators of The Pirate Bay have violated those rights and, as the evidence in Court will show, they did so to make substantial revenues for themselves. That kind of abuse of the rights of others cannot be allowed to continue, and that is why these criminal proceedings are so important for the health of the creative community."

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Posted February 16, 2009 16:17 Reply With QuoteEdit or Delete Message The trial of The Pirate Bay's backers kicked off Monday in Sweden as the prosecutor laid out an opening statement and the labels asked for $13 million in fines.

"The operators of The Pirate Bay have violated those rights and, as the evidence in Court will show, they did so to make substantial revenues for themselves

So the pirate bay creators made allot of money by giving content people wanted away for free? Sounds like the found a business model that works witch the content owners could not. If they can make money by giving the product for free with removed copy protection, why can’t the content owners do that form the start and just undercut the pirate bay? Looks like a business model that works to me, I think they should learn from success instead of trying to shut it down.

The defendants claim not to be worried. Tweeting from within the trial today, The Pirate Bay's programmer Peter Sunde wrote, "How the hell did they think this was going to be something else than EPIC FAIL for the prosecution? We're winning so hard."

You'd think that someone who is involved with TPB would know that using such an old meme as "EPIC FAIL" is in itself an epic fail (D'oh, I just did it myself!).

I'm sure you probably understand the flaw in your argument Thorjr, but I'll outline it just in case: you cannot have a true "business model" if the product you are selling or giving away is stolen, and therefore not yours to sell or give away.

I agree that record labels have moved slowly in monetizing digital distribution because it reduces their role in the process to almost nothing, which is a long-term threat to their business model. Because of this threat, it is understandable that they would pursue legal action to protect their distribution monopoly as long as possible. In the end this hurts the consumer.

Still, this does not give the pirate bay the LEGAL right to facilitate theft, so they will likely be convicted, fined, and thrown into prison. Though we all benefit from their actions indirectly, no amount of rhetoric about "the people" rising up and hearing arguments will save them.

Well unless the prosecution can show that TPB makes a profit doing what they are doing I don't see how the prosecution can possibly win.TPB facilitates theft like the car companies facilitate speeding (TPBs own example) or gun companies facilitate murder.TPB are pretty convinced that the prosecution is not going to be able to show that TPB make a profit from what they are doing, and they should know their own finances best.Remember that the swedish police raided TPB and never ended up pressing charges so if anything was going to happen, it was going to happen then.

Now whether you agree with what TPB is doing is neither here nor there. If it's not against the law, it's not against the law. Now if the law gets changed, that's a different matter.

Zakharov, there is no such thing as a special LEGAL right to facilitate theft. You can do whatever you want until it's made illegal.

I'm sure you probably understand the flaw in your argument Thorjr, but I'll outline it just in case: you cannot have a true "business model" if the product you are selling or giving away is stolen, and therefore not yours to sell or give away.

I agree that record labels have moved slowly in monetizing digital distribution because it reduces their role in the process to almost nothing, which is a long-term threat to their business model. Because of this threat, it is understandable that they would pursue legal action to protect their distribution monopoly as long as possible. In the end this hurts the consumer.

Still, this does not give the pirate bay the LEGAL right to facilitate theft, so they will likely be convicted, fined, and thrown into prison. Though we all benefit from their actions indirectly, no amount of rhetoric about "the people" rising up and hearing arguments will save them.

Zakharov, where does it say that TPB is selling or giving away stolen goods? Have you read the terms of service for the site? And your first sentance of your final paragraph sounds like your calling Google, Yahoo, MSN, Youtube, basically any service that allows you to search for content illegal because what... they provide you with results that maybe questionable at times? I guess if we were to live by that standard, all pawn shops would be illegal.

I find it hard to believe that corporations can't find a way to monetize their content that's better than requiring folks to buy copy-protected DVDs. Especially when, at least in the U.S., it's illegal even to make your own personal digital copy to play on your computer.

Sites like YouTube, Hulu, Vimeo....there's plenty of examples of content-hosting services that make money on free content. Which means that there's at least enough of a possibility for a thriving business model if the industries would at least look into it. They know more about this stuff than we do. They should try to find a way to make that work if free content is what the consumers want.

Which leads me to my next point:

quote:

no amount of rhetoric about "the people" rising up and hearing arguments will save them.

Yeah, it will. Case-study: iTunes current lack of DRM. Maybe I'm overly idealistic here, or maybe it's just Economics 101. Businesses that are out to make money succeed when they give their consumers the product they want at a price they deem reasonable. For better or worse, that's how it works. Lately, content makers have been seeing every customer as a potential enemy, armed with the super-deadly internet. Instead of trying to find a way to use this internet to help their customers.

Eventually, the consumer won't accept it, and the content makers will be forced to listen. Or go out of business.

Copyright exists to ensure that everyone in the creative world—from the artist to the record label, from the independent film producer to the TV programme maker—can choose how their creations are distributed and get fairly rewarded for their work

While i won't defend the pirate bay, or people who pirate stuff in general, most creators are rewarded plenty already, some of them are rewarded more than they deserve, others far less. Doesn't give anyone the right to steal stuff, but thats how i see it.

Hopefully this will be over soon, and the IFPI and the other media groups can go back to making horrible crap while the real talent struggles. What they need to do is shut up though, it's getting old hearing how horrible the pirates are, while these morons sit back and collect millions of dollars per year on the backs of the same creators they claim to be defending.

"The operators of The Pirate Bay have violated those rights and, as the evidence in Court will show, they did so to make substantial revenues for themselves

So the pirate bay creators made allot of money by giving content people wanted away for free? Sounds like the found a business model that works witch the content owners could not. If they can make money by giving the product for free with removed copy protection, why can’t the content owners do that form the start and just undercut the pirate bay? Looks like a business model that works to me, I think they should learn from success instead of trying to shut it down.

When your production costs on a product are $0, it's very easy to make a profit off of that product. The reason why content owners can't undercut TPB, aside from it being mathematically impossible to undercut free, is that their production costs aren't $0. Any business model they attempt has to factor in those non-trivial production costs. Unfortunately, I can't think of a single profitable business model that content owners can implement that can't also be implemented by copyright infringers like TPB.

I'm sure you probably understand the flaw in your argument Thorjr, but I'll outline it just in case: you cannot have a true "business model" if the product you are selling or giving away is stolen, and therefore not yours to sell or give away.

I know that very well. It’s not the pirate bay’s to give away but if the business model works than why do the record labels insist on using one that doesn’t? If people are willing to get their media form the pirate bay, they would do it from anyone who offers a similar service, and if this actually makes money than the record labels have no excuse on why they are failing. This should be a lesson to them on business sense. Chances are high that if the record labels somehow magically get rid of piracy, they won’t switch form a failing business model even though they can see that a different one works. That stubbornness is going to cost them because in the modern world piracy is real and it does cost them money but it doesn’t have to.

First off, they are not collecting millions of dollars off any artists. They don't sell content. They sell ads. That they have a search engine that millions use is just good business the same as Yahoo, Google, MSN. And I don't see anyone here complaining about them.

As for the business model of giving away the content, there is a slight problem. The problem isn't that it won't work. The free content model could work but they get more money gouging their customers the way they do it now. You think ANY actor is worth 1.5 million for a 30 minute tv spot? But they can get it because the studios make millions more. Until they have no other choice, they won't change their model because they are greedy. This is the key to any industry with a black market. A black market (torrents in this case) only exist because the current price for the product is held higher or supply lower, than supply/demand would dictate.

The Pirate Bay greatly facilitates copyright infringement - whether or not they make a profit really doesn't matter in my opinion. They deserve to be found guilty, pay a substantial fine, and go to jail.

Comparing Google or Yahoo to the pirate bay is disingenuous - you'd have to be incredibly stupid to not see the difference. 99.9% of Google/Yahoo searches are for legitimate content, while 95% of pirate bay searches (sure there's a small number of linux ISOs, etc. being searched for..) are for illegally pirated content.

Content providers may be able to find a viable business model by giving their content away for free - but the fact that they choose not to do so does not give anyone the right to take their content without consent. If you don't like the price of something, you don't have to buy it. But that means you go without. You have no right to take something because you don't want to pay for it. For a physical good, that would be stealing - and while the analogy doesn't hold up completely, the concept is the same - it's illegal and immoral to do so.

I'm sure you probably understand the flaw in your argument Thorjr, but I'll outline it just in case: you cannot have a true "business model" if the product you are selling or giving away is stolen, and therefore not yours to sell or give away.

I know that very well. It’s not the pirate bay’s to give away but if the business model works than why do the record labels insist on using one that doesn’t? If people are willing to get their media form the pirate bay, they would do it from anyone who offers a similar service, and if this actually makes money than the record labels have no excuse on why they are failing. This should be a lesson to them on business sense. Chances are high that if the record labels somehow magically get rid of piracy, they won’t switch form a failing business model even though they can see that a different one works. That stubbornness is going to cost them because in the modern world piracy is real and it does cost them money but it doesn’t have to.

Pirate Bay's production costs are substantially less than the content producers' costs. Just because TPB can make profit doesn't mean that the content producers could do the same.

Originally posted by TechGeek:First off, they are not collecting millions of dollars off any artists. They don't sell content. They sell ads. That they have a search engine that millions use is just good business the same as Yahoo, Google, MSN. And I don't see anyone here complaining about them.

As for the business model of giving away the content, there is a slight problem. The problem isn't that it won't work. The free content model could work but they get more money gouging their customers the way they do it now. You think ANY actor is worth 1.5 million for a 30 minute tv spot? But they can get it because the studios make millions more. Until they have no other choice, they won't change their model because they are greedy. This is the key to any industry with a black market. A black market (torrents in this case) only exist because the current price for the product is held higher or supply lower, than supply/demand would dictate.

The problem is that the current content black market is not charging anything for their 'products'. It's very hard to compete with free.

I have to wonder what the bigger implications are of this trial. TPB does not even store any content, all they basically are is a search engine for torrent files, if I remember correctly. If this trial comes out a loss for TPB what search engine will be next on the chopping block for pointing to "illegal" content? If you ask me, they need to either stop being stupid and have a better business plan then they already have, or go after the actual people who are ripping cds/dvd/etc.

The vast majority of content pirated on these sorts of sites in highly profitable, well sold, and making money. It is still of dubious morality. But it is beyond me how some of you can get so angry about it. These producers of content are loaded, and actively demand that work they produce continue to make them money for 95 years after they have died! That is also immoral. Do not support either end of the spectrum people. At the very least, don't get angry at the defence of rich people. Like crikey. What is wrong with you?

When your production costs on a product are $0, it's very easy to make a profit off of that product. The reason why content owners can't undercut TPB, aside from it being mathematically impossible to undercut free, is that their production costs aren't $0. Any business model they attempt has to factor in those non-trivial production costs. Unfortunately, I can't think of a single profitable business model that content owners can implement that can't also be implemented by copyright infringers like TPB.

Right now the record companies have money coming in from other revenue streams. The math doesn’t take account other forms of revenue they can still use. No one is advocating dropping all current forms of sales; just take advantage of a business model that can bring them money from somewhere they currently aren’t getting any. Some people will pay a premium for services such as a physical disk copy of the media, a physical concert, and a trip to the theatre; those streams still make money and will continue to do so. Other people however, might not want that and currently result to piracy, those people may or may not have used option “A” if piracy did not exist but it does exist and they do use it, so why not make money from that to. The industry can still keep making money from every revenue stream they have but instead of wasting resources to fight piracy, they can earn some money by using the same business model as an extra revenue stream in addition to what they have now. So if we take that into account they in fact can undercut the pirate bay and with minor investments they can even provide a service more favourable to the public to use. Aside from all that, they would give themselves a PR boost we all know they desperately need. Sounds like a win win for everyone.

When your production costs on a product are $0, it's very easy to make a profit off of that product. The reason why content owners can't undercut TPB, aside from it being mathematically impossible to undercut free, is that their production costs aren't $0. Any business model they attempt has to factor in those non-trivial production costs. Unfortunately, I can't think of a single profitable business model that content owners can implement that can't also be implemented by copyright infringers like TPB.

Right now the record companies have money coming in from other revenue streams. The math doesn’t take account other forms of revenue they can still use. No one is advocating dropping all current forms of sales; just take advantage of a business model that can bring them money from somewhere they currently aren’t getting any. Some people will pay a premium for services such as a physical disk copy of the media, a physical concert, and a trip to the theatre; those streams still make money and will continue to do so. Other people however, might not want that and currently result to piracy, those people may or may not have used option “A” if piracy did not exist but it does exist and they do use it, so why not make money from that to. The industry can still keep making money from every revenue stream they have but instead of wasting resources to fight piracy, they can earn some money by using the same business model as an extra revenue stream in addition to what they have now. So if we take that into account they in fact can undercut the pirate bay and with minor investments they can even provide a service more favourable to the public to use. Aside from all that, they would give themselves a PR boost we all know they desperately need. Sounds like a win win for everyone.

1)How can you undercut free?2)If content owners begin offering some of their content for free, a non-trivial portion of their current paying customers will switch to the free content. This switch will reduce their income. Why should they reduce their income in order to accommodate illegal activities?

1)How can you undercut free?2)If content owners begin offering some of their content for free, a non-trivial portion of their current paying customers will switch to the free content. This switch will reduce their income. Why should they reduce their income in order to accommodate illegal activities?

1)By providing something the Pirate bay can’t, a legal and safe way to download content 2)As long as their non free options offer something more instead of taking things away (DRM), people will still buy it. Some people collect DVDs and want a physical copy, others want to go to a concert, others want to go to the movie theatre; downloading content can’t give people everything they want even if the content is more or less the same. For example, the size of blue ray movies make it not the most effective thing downloaded so people may still choose to pay for a physical copy. Software manufacturers can still rely on business licences witch make allot more money than personal licences. Offering things for free personal use doesn’t have to cost money, if the pirate bay managed to make money doing it so can the content owners, and as long as they have other streams of revenue, they won’t lose money but instead make a profit. The only thing that makes this illegal, is no permission is granted, so in fact the content owners would be sponsoring a legal means of obtaining digital content. The old business model is failing and may eventually stop making them money all together, they can ether change it or die out, it’s not just a gift to the public it’s a way of securing their business and revenue streams.

1)How can you undercut free?2)If content owners begin offering some of their content for free, a non-trivial portion of their current paying customers will switch to the free content. This switch will reduce their income. Why should they reduce their income in order to accommodate illegal activities?

1)By providing something the Pirate bay can’t, a legal and safe way to download content 2)As long as their non free options offer something more instead of taking things away (DRM), people will still buy it. Some people collect DVDs and want a physical copy, others want to go to a concert, others want to go to the movie theatre; downloading content can’t give people everything they want even if the content is more or less the same. For example, the size of blue ray movies make it not the most effective thing downloaded so people may still choose to pay for a physical copy. Software manufacturers can still rely on business licences witch make allot more money than personal licences. Offering things for free personal use doesn’t have to cost money, if the pirate bay managed to make money doing it so can the content owners, and as long as they have other streams of revenue, they won’t lose money but instead make a profit. The only thing that makes this illegal, is no permission is granted, so in fact the content owners would be sponsoring a legal means of obtaining digital content. The old business model is failing and may eventually stop making them money all together, they can ether change it or die out, it’s not just a gift to the public it’s a way of securing their business and revenue streams.

Please demonstrate that offering a product for free will generate enough additional revenue to compensate for the loss of currently-paying customers. Until you can do so, there's no reason to believe that offering products for free will increase revenues. If an action won't increase revenues, why should a business take that action?

Also, stop trotting out the silly "if the pirate bay managed to make money doing it so can the content owners" line. TPB has trivial production costs for the content they offer, the content producers do not. This is a very important distinction which you still fail to take into account.

This will be interesting to see, thats for sure. from what i understand, this whole trial hinges on whether or not the pirate bay made substantial profits from their activity, not the fact that they were distributing copyrighted work. I have a feeling this will only prove disasterous for the recording industry ass. of the world, just like every other attempt at stopping the pirate bay has. all these idiots are doing is providing more and more exposure to the pirate bay and furthering thier "losses". thats abundantly obvious by looking at the numbers the pirate bay so gleefully puts forward, the user base at TPB explodes every time the R.I.Ass.A or one of their fellow Ass.'s gives TPB a free publicity stunt such as this. people who otherwise have never heard of TPB or dont know what its about read these stories and a curiosity is born. after educating themselves on what the TPB is all about, these previously clueless people realize how easy it is to get content free they once had to pay for.

Its like these idiots have a disease, they know these stupid publicity stunts are only adding to the piracy they say is hurting them so bad, but they go forward with them anyway...

These producers of content are loaded, and actively demand that work they produce continue to make them money for 95 years after they have died!

And for those not "loaded" or demanding 95 years of profit, what then?

See the problem isn't that people don't have legitimate complaints, but that they take shortcuts in trying to effect the kind of change that's needed. Downloading from piratebay isn't going to help the artists under contract with big media. There are legally sanctioned ways to cause positive change.

Please demonstrate that offering a product for free will generate enough additional revenue to compensate for the loss of currently-paying customers. Until you can do so, there's no reason to believe that offering products for free will increase revenues. If an action won't increase revenues, why should a business take that action?

Also, stop trotting out the silly "if the pirate bay managed to make money doing it so can the content owners" line. TPB has trivial production costs for the content they offer, the content producers do not. This is a very important distinction which you still fail to take into account.

That’s for the content owners to do. Piracy is here today yet people still pay for the products even though they can pirate it just as easily as anyone who does so. All the content owners have to do is take advantage of the current “pirates” and add that to the revenue streams. If they continue to fight piracy, they will just waste allot of money. If the pirate bay goes down, there are already other websites available and more will come. They can ether not make any money from this, or take this successful model and integrate it to their current revenue stream. The content owners waste allot of money on their anti piracy campaign. New forms of DRM that don’t even work cost allot of money, combine all that and they could make up the money. They should invest in what works not what doesn’t. This is an opportunity for the content owners that they see as a threat, it’s not my job to convince them to make money instead of blaming pirates for why they don’t.

I say outsource all those motherfucking musicians and artists to China and be done with it, like everything else.

The record labels won't have any music to be stolen, win for them. Win for people of the world who now pay in yuan. Win for China. Oh yeah, lawyers become losers but we might as well outsource that as well.

Still, this does not give the pirate bay the LEGAL right to facilitate theft

This is a common misconception - in almost every single western legal system what the pirate bay does IS NOT THEFT! I am sick of seeing it described as such.

It may be many other things, but the crime of theft is invariably defined in most countries as the the taking of CORPOREAL PROPERTY without the owners permission. CORPOREAL PROPERTY is physical items, as such any data on a computer cannot be 'stolen' or the product of a 'theft.' This is best exemplified by the rash of cases relating to the theft of electricity, which invariably almost all courts decide cannot be stolen.

Of course what the Piratebay does may be illegal for many, many other reasons, but the crime of theft it is most likely not.

Just to get something straight: TPB is not just a torrent search engine; in fact that's almost incidental, seeing how often torrents show up on Google. TPB also hosts the actual torrents and it runs the trackers that facilitate a huge amount of the current P2P traffic*. The latter is by far the most important issue; there was a recent study covering the (short term) impact on the BT ecosystem if the pirate bay trackers were to be shut down. I guess DHT/trackerless would become a lot more common.

* And I say facilitate in the full awareness of how the protocol works, obviously the trackers are not involved in sending around any actual bytes of content data.

It may be many other things, but the crime of theft is invariably defined in most countries as the the taking of CORPOREAL PROPERTY without the owners permission. CORPOREAL PROPERTY is physical items, as such any data on a computer cannot be 'stolen' or the product of a 'theft.'

So, that means Bernard Madoff didn't steal anything right? The money he was moving around wasn't physical. It was assets kept electronically. That's great news -- going to set up a Ponzi scheme right now!

It may be many other things, but the crime of theft is invariably defined in most countries as the the taking of CORPOREAL PROPERTY without the owners permission. CORPOREAL PROPERTY is physical items, as such any data on a computer cannot be 'stolen' or the product of a 'theft.'

So, that means Bernard Madoff didn't steal anything right? The money he was moving around wasn't physical. It was assets kept electronically. That's great news -- going to set up a Ponzi scheme right now!

Please demonstrate that offering a product for free will generate enough additional revenue to compensate for the loss of currently-paying customers. Until you can do so, there's no reason to believe that offering products for free will increase revenues. If an action won't increase revenues, why should a business take that action?

Also, stop trotting out the silly "if the pirate bay managed to make money doing it so can the content owners" line. TPB has trivial production costs for the content they offer, the content producers do not. This is a very important distinction which you still fail to take into account.

That’s for the content owners to do. Piracy is here today yet people still pay for the products even though they can pirate it just as easily as anyone who does so. All the content owners have to do is take advantage of the current “pirates” and add that to the revenue streams. If they continue to fight piracy, they will just waste allot of money. If the pirate bay goes down, there are already other websites available and more will come. They can ether not make any money from this, or take this successful model and integrate it to their current revenue stream. The content owners waste allot of money on their anti piracy campaign. New forms of DRM that don’t even work cost allot of money, combine all that and they could make up the money. They should invest in what works not what doesn’t. This is an opportunity for the content owners that they see as a threat, it’s not my job to convince them to make money instead of blaming pirates for why they don’t.

Let me see if I have this right. Copyright infringement is rampant. Instead of enforcing the law and dealing with the illegal actions of criminals, we should expect the victims to change their ways instead of the criminals?

Please demonstrate that offering a product for free will generate enough additional revenue to compensate for the loss of currently-paying customers. Until you can do so, there's no reason to believe that offering products for free will increase revenues. If an action won't increase revenues, why should a business take that action?

Also, stop trotting out the silly "if the pirate bay managed to make money doing it so can the content owners" line. TPB has trivial production costs for the content they offer, the content producers do not. This is a very important distinction which you still fail to take into account.

That’s for the content owners to do. Piracy is here today yet people still pay for the products even though they can pirate it just as easily as anyone who does so. All the content owners have to do is take advantage of the current “pirates” and add that to the revenue streams. If they continue to fight piracy, they will just waste allot of money. If the pirate bay goes down, there are already other websites available and more will come. They can ether not make any money from this, or take this successful model and integrate it to their current revenue stream. The content owners waste allot of money on their anti piracy campaign. New forms of DRM that don’t even work cost allot of money, combine all that and they could make up the money. They should invest in what works not what doesn’t. This is an opportunity for the content owners that they see as a threat, it’s not my job to convince them to make money instead of blaming pirates for why they don’t.

Let me see if I have this right. Copyright infringement is rampant. Instead of enforcing the law and dealing with the illegal actions of criminals, we should expect the victims to change their ways instead of the criminals?

The fact is that they have a right to fight, but they will never win. Instead of trying to go against the stream, they can try to adopt the stream for their own advantage, like what happened with the original pirates and corsaires, or all the counterstream mouvement which appeared throught the last century (like punk for exemple).This whole case is based on the fact that TPB is making money out of their tracker. Which mean there is a money source there (according to the accusation). And against what you are saying, adopting this will not undercut the other possible revenu streams of the Big Names.You have to consider 6 simple facts :1) Most of the population is computer illeterate2) Torrents have a bad reputation and are linked to piracy (for the common guy)3) Most people go to TPB to find a service they can't find anywhere legally (DRM free, one CD high quality movies)4) The proportion of people doing this because 'it is cool to fight against the system' is really small.5) If offered a legal way to get the same service as TPB, most people will switch (look at Hulu success story)6) Most people like to have a physical representation of what they buy, like a CD

Now, let's look at what happen if the Majors open a free torrent supported by advertissement (which is currently the case of TPB, and in this case, Majors can go more heavy on it)1) Computer illeterate people will still be illetare, and still buy the physical media2) Most people will not believe this can be happening, and will stick to the physical media3 and 5) They will go to the free legal version instead of the illegal one, if given the choice4) Those can't be save, but the amount of seeder on the illegal alternative will go down dramaticly, and they will be forced to switch for the legal system, or been cut out of the community6) Those will buy the physical media, whatever happen, be it rain or snow.

So, whatever way you look at it, just by openning a legal ad-supported tracker, you will undercut the piracy (just by the moving of seeders), you will not undercut your current revenu stream that much (because people will by the physical media, no matter what), and you will open a new reveny stream, just by putting advertisement.

The real reason the record labels are mad about this is because they are extremely greedy. If ThePirateBay isn't selling the artists' content, it doesn't matter if they profit from it. Do grocery stores get sued for handing out free cookies from Pepperidge Farm? Nope. In much the same way, people can choose to go out and buy (or download for pay) the songs they pirate, and I, for one, do. If I don't like it, or if it's overpriced, (Adobe CS4 Master Collection anyone?), I won't pay for it. They make a buttload of money per CD, so I'll only buy it if it's worth it. Finally, it's not as though the record labels are really hurting from this much -- they haven't lost money from most of these people because most wouldn't have downloaded it *without* it being free. So go lose a lawsuit, labels, and win ThePirateBay more recognition!

Please demonstrate that offering a product for free will generate enough additional revenue to compensate for the loss of currently-paying customers. Until you can do so, there's no reason to believe that offering products for free will increase revenues. If an action won't increase revenues, why should a business take that action?

lwts see you want a demonstration that giving away a product will genorate revenue try here http://www.baen.com/library/ kinda explans the whole thing . works for music and video about the same and for books.. the whole saying someone that downloaded a single song and it cost them 1 mil is just ludacrus .. if i had downloaded a song book movie . they did not lose any revanew becas i am not going to spend 20 - $30 bucks on somethign that is mostlikly junk . i have befor and will in the futer read a boo be it from a librey or free baen book and then buy the real book just to have it on hand for the feal of a book same with a movie i will buy a movie that is good that i have seen on a tv just to have the extra dvd content . i have purchesed an album just becas i heard a song on mtv or whatever ... the music industr's main concepts are just plane flawed .. just had 2 throw my 2 cents in and dont mind the typonise

Let me see if I have this right. Copyright infringement is rampant. Instead of enforcing the law and dealing with the illegal actions of criminals, we should expect the victims to change their ways instead of the criminals?

We don’t have to expect anything. All I’m saying is if the record companies want to keep making money they will take advantage of these trends we see and that will cause them to make money. Content owners are not the police their job is to make money instead of wasting it fighting a futile battle. If instead of making money they would rather make themselves appear as law enforcement pirate punishing heroes that is their business, but if they want to make money they will take advantage of the situation.